Rhododaphne: or The Thessalian Spell/Preface
PREFACE.
The ancient celebrity of Thessalian magic is familiar, even from Horace, to every classical reader. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius turn entirely upon it, and the following passage in that work might serve as the text of a long commentary on the subject. "Considering that I was now in the middle of Thessaly, celebrated by the accordant voice of the world as the birthplace of the magic art, I examined all things with intense curiosity. Nor did I believe any thing which I saw in that city (Hypata) to be what it appeared; but I imagined that every object around me had been changed by incantation from its natural shape; that the stones of the streets, and the waters of the fountains, were indurated and liquified human bodies; and that the trees which surrounded the city, and the birds which were singing in their boughs, were equally human beings, in the disguise of leaves and feathers. I expected the statues and images to walk, the walls to speak; I anticipated prophetic voices from the cattle, and oracles from the morning sky."
According to Pliny, Menander, who was skilled in the subtleties of learning, composed a Thessalian drama, in which he comprised the incantations and magic ceremonies of women drawing down the moon. Pliny considers the belief in magic as the combined effect of the operations of three powerful causes, medicine, superstition, and the mathematical arts. He does not mention music, to which the ancients (as is shewn by the fables of Orpheus, Amphion, the Sirens, &c.) ascribed the most miraculous powers: but, strictly speaking, it was included in the mathematical arts, as being a science of numerical proportion.
The belief in the supernatural powers of music and pharmacy ascends to the earliest ages of poetry. Its most beautiful forms are the Circe of Homer, and Medea in the days of her youth, as she appears in the third book of Apollonius.
Lucian's treatise on the Syrian Goddess contains much wild and wonderful imagery; and his Philopseudes, though it does not mention Thessalian magic in particular, is a compendium of almost all the ideas entertained by the ancients of supernatural power, distinct from, and subordinate to, that of the gods; though the gods were supposed to be drawn from their cars by magic, and compelled, however reluctantly, to yield it a temporary obedience. These subjects appear to have been favourite topics with the ancients in their social hours, as we may judge from the Philopseudes, and from the tales related by Niceros and Trimalchio at the feast given by the latter in the Satyricon of Petronius. Trimalchio concludes his marvellous narrative by saying (in the words which form the motto of this poem): "You must of necessity believe that there are women of supernatural science, framers of nocturnal incantations, who can turn the world upside down."
It will appear from these references, and more might have been made if it had not appeared superfluous, that the power ascribed by the ancients to Thessalian magic is by no means exaggerated in the following poem, though its forms are in some measure diversified.
The opening scene of the poem is in the Temple of Love at Thespia, a town of Bœotia, near the foot of Mount Helicon. That Love was the principal deity of Thespia we learn from Pausanias; and Plutarch, in the beginning of his Erotic dialogue, informs us, that a festival in honour of this deity was celebrated by the Thespians with great splendor every fifth year. They also celebrated a quinquennial festival in honour of the Muses, who had a sacred grove and temple in Helicon. Both these festivals are noticed by Pausanias, who mentions likewise the three statues of Love, (though without any distinguishing attributes,) and those of Venus and Phryne by Praxiteles. The Winged Love of Praxiteles, in Pentelican marble, which he gave to his mistress Phryne, who bestowed it on her native Thespia, was held in immense admiration by the ancients. Cicero speaks of it as the great and only attraction of Thespia.
The time is an intermediate period between the age of the Greek tragedians, who are alluded to in the second canto, and that of Pausanias, in whose time the Thespian altar had been violated by Nero, and Praxiteles's statue of Love removed to Rome, for which outrageous impiety, says Pausanias, he was pursued by the just and manifest vengeance of the gods, who, it would seem, had already terrified Claudius into restoring it, when Caligula had previously taken it away.
The second song in the fifth canto is founded on the Homeric hymn, "Bacchus, or the Pirates."
Some other imitations of classical passages, but for the most part interwoven with unborrowed ideas, will occur to the classical reader.
The few notes subjoined are such as seemed absolutely necessary to explain or justify the text. Those of the latter description might, perhaps, have been more numerous, if much deference had seemed due to that species of judgment, which, having neither light nor tact of its own, can only see and feel through the medium of authority.
μαθοντες δε λαβροι
παγγλωσσιᾳ, κορακες ως, ακραντα γαρυετον
Διος προς ορνιχα θεῖον.
Pind. Olymp . II.